I'm not a historian by any standard but I do know quite a bit about blackpowder firearms and im looking for something with a lot of substance and detail, mostly about the emergence of firearms technology but to be honest I'm just looking for anything pertaining to it as the subject seems to be dry as a bone compared to say the history of cavalry or siege weapons.
"Substance and detail" and "Emergence of firearms technology". Hmmm.
Hall, B. S. (1997). Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology). The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hall is very good at laying out the creation and evolution of firearms from the late medieval into the Renaissance.. Hard to divorce that from advances in cannon and manufacture of gunpowder in general, and how they were all used- and so that's in there as well. I think Hall is especially good on the development of gunpowder.
As the title implies, it's Eurocentric. So, there's
Needham, J., Ping-Yü, H., Gwei-Djen, L., & Ling, W. (1987). Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic. Cambridge University Press.The Science and Civilization in China series is a massive undertaking, and this is one of three related military ones- v 6 is on Missiles and Sieges, v. 8 on Shock weapons and Cavalry.
Chase, K. (2010). Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Chase explores why it was that gunpowder technology first appeared in China but really developed in Europe. Not as thorough on Eastern origins as the book from the Needham Institute series, but easier to find and certainly cheaper if you want to own it.
Hayward, J. F. (1965). The Art of the Gunmaker volume I : 1500 to 1660 .Barrie & Rockliff
An old book, but if you want detail, this has got detail ( did you know, for example, that in some of the earlier wheel locks the wheel pivoted on an axle going all the way through the stock?). It's much like getting a look into the back room of the museum- with a curator, though, not a historian. It's a book targeted ( hah!) at the collector, not someone interested in social context or political history.
Lenk, T., Hayward, J. F., & Urquhart, G. A. (2007). The Flintlock: Its Origin, Development, and Use (1st edition). Skyhorse Publishing.
An even older book, pub. in Sweden in 1939. Hayward credited Thorsten Lenk in his Gunmaker book above, and helped to bring this out in 1965.. Urquhart did the translating into English. You could think of this as something similar to read after The Art of the Gunmaker , also replete with details and names of makers. You can find this as a free download, but the photos are of awful quality. If you want clear photos, you are better off looking in libraries, used bookstores, for a paper copy.